


Born and Bred

by legendofthesevenstars



Category: Tenkuu no Escaflowne | The Vision of Escaflowne
Genre: Family, Gen, Memory Loss, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25473427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legendofthesevenstars/pseuds/legendofthesevenstars
Summary: Celena has no interest in behaving or growing up, only wanting her freedom and the knowledge of who she was in Zaibach. After he tells her about the missing ten years of her life, Allen retreats to his father's study for some solace, where he finds some journals that reveal what he has forgotten - that her wild nature is not entirely a new development.
Relationships: Allen Schezar & Celena Schezar
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	Born and Bred

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first entry for this year's Yearly Esca Pic'n'Fic. The theme is "History," and this is a response to drkstars' lovely [illustration](https://drkstars-art.tumblr.com/post/620735184846897152/this-is-my-work-for-the-escaflowne-picnfic-i) of young Celena.
> 
> Thank you for the inspiration, drk! I really enjoyed revisiting the Schezar siblings in a different light!

The man in the portrait had her brother’s nose.

In fact, the nose was the only indication that this man was, for certain, related to her. Though _Schezar_ was engraved on a little gold tag at the bottom of the window of the frame, it might as well be any other name. Not because the man inside the frame was dressed in finery—with ornate gold thread woven throughout his clothing, gold buttons decorating his vest and open tailcoat, and a monocle covering his eye—but because his eyes were narrowed and stern, his pose stiff and proper.

“Proper” and “stern” were not words Celena would choose to describe herself. Allen was always scolding her to sit up to the table, rather than sitting on her feet. She had to cross her legs at the knee or ankle, not spread them. She had to sit up straight and say “please” and “thank you.” When she bent one knee up and leaned her head against it, or wiped her mouth on the back of her hand instead of her napkin, he buried his face in one hand with a world-weary sigh.

“You’re not acting properly,” he said.

And the lessons with the tutor were boring. She would rather go outside and run around in the grass. Pick flowers and climb trees and wade through the swamp, caking the soles of her feet in mud and soaking her trousers up to the knees. Lifting a long, thick, heavy stick with both hands, she swung it, slashing the air like she’d seen Allen do when he practiced his forms with a wooden blade. She liked the stick. Something felt familiar about the slashing motion, something she couldn’t quite place.

“You must take your studies seriously, milady,” the tutor admonished her after “rescuing” her from the swamp, where she had been fighting invisible swamp beasties with her stick-sword. Celena hated how the tutor and the staff always called her “milady” and “Lady Schezar.” She hated the tutor, period.

That afternoon, the tutor told Allen about Celena’s “appalling behavior.” How Celena was improper and inattentive and, quite frankly, _rude_ , butting out in the middle of their sessions to run through the field brandishing a stick. But when Allen heard that the tutor’s solution was tying Celena to her chair to stop her from escaping, the woman was let go. He would take care of her studies instead, beginning immediately.

The next morning, she was brought to the sitting room after breakfast, where the giant portrait of the big-nosed man loomed over them. There were no books, nor did Allen give her any paper or writing implements. She knew, and dreaded, what was coming: a lecture.

_Booooring._

“Before you learn anything more, you clearly must learn why,” Allen said. “Why I am so invested in your education, and why it discourages me when you don’t realize how important it is. I know the tutor was… not the right choice, so this is my responsibility now.”

Celena whistled idly, looking everywhere but at him. “Not the right choice” was putting it mildly. And speaking of “choice,” she had some choice words for that woman, all of which would probably make Allen cover his ears and scold her for speaking improperly. She snorted at the thought.

“Are you listening to me?”

She wiggled her toes. “Yep, yep. Never listened harder.”

“I need you to take this seriously, Celena. It seems like you’ve forgotten, or you don’t understand, what it means to bear our family name. We are Schezars, Celena. Our name has meaning.”

She wrinkled her nose. What meaning? Did it have anything to do with the fancy party she remembered? Mama and Papa had held some fancy party with lots of people in suits and dresses, holding teacups with their pinkies sticking out. Papa had looked an awful lot like the stodgy old guy on the wall. But Allen barely looked like Papa.

“Does this have anything to do with him?” She pointed to the portrait.

“He is our grandfather, Solomon. And yes. Somewhat.”

“So what does it ‘mean’ to be a Schezar?”

“You must have a strong sense of duty. Something that guides you. And right now, you act as if you’ve lost your purpose. To be honest, I’m not sure what to do with you.”

She pouted. She didn’t know what to do with herself either. Ever since she’d come back to live with Allen, she hadn’t understood anything. Ten years of her life had been spent as someone else entirely, someone whose memories had now been completely eroded from her mind. All that remained were bits and pieces of the old life. Little broken shards of mirrored glass, and she could hardly see herself reflected in a waifish pawn who’d been so hazy with medication she could barely think at all.

“The teenager” being inaccessible, she’d settled on returning to the “little girl.” Though she remembered more about being a little girl than an older child or teenager, it wasn’t much. Her parents at the party, Allen’s voice and face, the puffy dresses she’d used to wear. The smell of an open field, a sea breeze, and the big mansion where she’d lived. Allen told her how she had been _angelic, innocent,_ and _pure_. So she tried to be that little angel she’d used to be to make her brother smile again. Seeing him frowning made her stomach feel empty. But she wanted to be free like that little girl had been. Couldn’t she be both free and pure?

“The second part of being a Schezar,” Allen said, “is pride.”

“Pride?” She frowned at the portrait. Her grandfather certainly looked proud enough.

“Pride in your duty. For me, I’m proud to serve Asturia as a Knight Caeli.”

She folded her arms. “Which you’re currently taking a break from to try and teach me your values of duty and pride.”

“Because you wouldn’t fulfill _your_ duty of catching up on your education, it’s become my duty now. But I would not be attempting to educate you if I did not genuinely believe you were capable.”

“What am I being ‘educated’ for?”

“To become a proper noblewoman.”

“You mean all that etiquette nonsense? What’s the point?”

“So that you can eventually become a proper wife.”

“That’s _it_? I don’t see _you_ looking for a wife. Is that why it has to be me?”

There was a break in his composure. Then he relaxed his shoulders slightly and sighed.

“My past is complicated. I don’t want to have to explain all of that right now.”

She realized she’d struck a nerve. Though she’d usually leave him alone out of respect for his feelings, she felt compelled to press further.

“So because of your past, I’m the one who has to get married. And let me guess, be a mother and have babies?”

He said nothing.

“Gross,” she said.

“I never said you had to get married now. But you have to stop being a child and become a _woman_.”

“Why?” She frowned. “What do you do? Sit inside all day and talk to the tutor and the maids. Booooring!”

Besides, Allen kept telling her how sweet and innocent she had been as a child. He wanted to hide her from the other person she’d been, so she’d only heard rumors in Palas. But she knew that the other person had piloted a Guymelef because of the armor she’d been wearing when Allen brought her home. Heat and blood were the only sensations she could recover, other than the occasional tingling itch beneath her right cheek. Sometimes, whirlwinds of heat and blood in her nightmares woke her up, leaving her gasping for breath in the middle of the night. The other person was terrifying and powerful. She had to be innocent and weak. Make herself small again, to forget who she had been.

But something inside her felt wild. When she swung that stick around like a sword, she was exhilarated by the rush of wind with each swing. Her heart beat in her throat, and she felt like laughing and laughing. Someone was laughing inside her, as if from far away, and there was a pair of kind eyes and a furred hand. And then there were screams, blurry, underwater, and indistinct, and she was struggling while strapped to a table, and the hand held hers while she writhed around, and she tried to reach out to touch the person who was screaming, as if through a lake in which her face was mirrored, and then the whole scene disappeared in a ripple, sending the wave of a shudder through the roots of her muscles and the marrow of her bones.

Who was that other wild person inside of her, who lit her up with ardor she didn’t understand when she wielded a stick like it was a blade? The person who blazed passionately inside her and carried memories of blood and a stinging gash on a cheek?

“What’s so wrong with being a child?” she said, more quietly than she’d expected. “I thought that was how you wanted me to be. Your angel of a little sister.”

“Not if it’s hurting you. I’m only trying to do what’s best for you. I thought…”

“But you don’t understand. I don’t understand! I don’t understand anything! How am I supposed to know—how do I even know who I am? I don’t know who I am. I don’t know…”

“Celena, calm down—”

“I don’t want to calm down!” She stood up from her chair and shoved it to the floor, watching as it clattered against the wood. The wild feeling inside her made her stomach churn and her forehead burn. “I just want to be free. That’s all I want to do.”

Allen’s brow knitted in concern. Then he lowered his head.

“You’re right. I don’t understand. But how can I be honest with you? I don’t want you to hurt any more than you already do. I don’t want to hurt you at all.”

“Tell me,” she said.

He raised his head to meet her gaze.

“Tell me about _him_.”

—

Allen had tried to let her down as easily as he could. How could he possibly explain everything that Dilandau had done? How could he tell her that the pure, innocent sister he remembered had leveled cities and countries with the twin flames of his monstrous red Guymelef? How could he explain to her that her desire to swing a sword around wasn’t just something he could take at face value as child’s play, that it scared him more than she could realize?

The only consolation he had, both for himself and for her, was that it hadn’t been Celena in the Guymelef. Dilandau had been entirely beyond her control. She could still be a girl, and he wanted to give her a chance to become a woman. Leave it all behind her. After all, that was all he could possibly do for the things that still haunted him. Try to forget Father and Mother and Marlene, forget the look on the Duke’s face when he died, forget the tears Chid had cried when Zaibach destroyed his country. And try to forget the wrongs he’d done to the Schezar name. Try to fool both himself and Celena into believing he’d always done as much as he could have.

But it was hard to be proud of himself. Even—maybe especially—when he remembered his last conversation with Father. Did he really love Allen? Or just love the little boy he remembered, just like Allen loved the little girl he remembered, and struggled to reconcile her with the woman who had spent ten years of her life as an instrument of war?

When in a pensive mood, he often turned to his father’s things to try and understand what he’d come from. Leon had not been the typical Schezar, yet Allen had never known any of his ancestors, so his itinerant father was the only precedent he’d had. He would read through the journal Father had kept during his travels through the Mystic Valley, trying to understand what he was thinking, reading between the lines to decipher any love he felt for his wife and children.

Unwilling to wallow in the tragedy of his father’s departure, he opened the doors of the closet, seeking fresh reading material. Stashed beneath a pile of books, he found some journals thick with must and age that seemed to predate the Mystic Valley log. One leather-encased volume was curiously singed on the side. He opened it to a random page.

_heard more regarding little Celena’s curious behavior from Florian. While watching the children this afternoon, he witnessed how a malicious spirit possessed Celena to suddenly push her brother into the mud, ruining his freshly-washed shirt. She then proceeded to throw a pile of leaves and sticks on him as she pushed him deeper into the mud, apparently intending to “bury” him alive. Uncertain what may have caused such terrifying behavior, Florian chalks it up to the girl being merely three and unknowing of proper conduct. Encia is horrified, as am I. This is not an issue of proper conduct. There is a spot of devilishness in our otherwise sweet little daughter._

What? How? He couldn’t remember Celena doing anything like that to him. She never would have _pushed_ him, let alone try to bury him alive. A horrifying thought. Maybe Florian had been right and it had just been Celena’s way of playing. He hoped that was the case.

Turning to the next entry, he read:

_More disconcerting activity from our little girl today, the least concerning of which being her crude manner of sticking out her tongue and spitting a “raspberry” when scolded. Today she slammed her bear against the wall of the house until he tore his arm, cried for Elspeth to fix him, then had torn the other arm completely off within the hour. And when she was brought inside after the horrifying commotion she made destroying the bear, we found her stoking the fire with pages from her storybooks!_

Stunned, he stared wide-eyed at the page for a moment before turning to the next leaf. He read further. All about how Celena had dragged her toys through the dirt and burned off their fur, cut off chunks of her brother’s hair with the garden shears, pricked her brother’s fingers with thorns she took from the rose bush, ripped her good clothes running through the field, and even lit the rug on fire after she took a stick inside, put it in the fire, and dropped the flaming stick on the rug—perhaps not by accident. For nearly two weeks, Celena had not just misbehaved. She’d caused chaos.

Looking up from the page, he stared at the rack against the wall where his father’s trenchcoat still hung. Could Celena really have been malicious and destructive? He only remembered a sweet innocent little girl with a smile that he’d always treasured, a smile that had shone a sunbeam through his most tragic memories. Had even that not been real? Had she always been dark inside?

Would that explain him, too? He still remembered back-talking Balgus. How he’d used to snap and spit, been nothing but an entitled, irritating little brat to a man who had given up his duty to his home country to nurture his student’s destiny. Had she become mean and untamed because of him? And had there been something of himself, and of her, he’d recognized in Dilandau’s sneers?

A sudden, frenzied knock on the door startled him and made him jump out of his seat. Swallowing, he answered, “Come in,” as he eyed the ornamental sword hanging on the wall.

Celena skulked in, clutching her shoulders with both hands, drooping blonde curls hiding her face from view.

“Celena?” His shoulders tensed, and he tightened his grip on the arms of the chair. Her hands were empty. There was nothing to fear, of course. Dilandau didn’t have any reason to kill him. His personal vendetta had been against Van.

She stood in place, trembling, then she sunk to the floor, hands landing flat on the wood planks.

“Is everything all right?”

She slammed her open palm on the floor, and he flinched.

“ _I want to remember_!” she bellowed, and he gasped. The glass in the window rang with her proclamation.

“Remember who I was,” she said, a moment later, almost inaudible. “Remember him.”

Allen’s heart pounded in his throat.

“He’s still part of me,” she continued, her voice trembling. “He never left. I try to get to him. But I can’t. I can’t remember…”

Too stunned to speak, he remained silent.

“I don’t want to be nobody anymore. I want to be _somebody_. The only time I was ever somebody was when I was him. When I was him, my life had a purpose. Even if it was given to me by Zaibach, I had a reason. I had a mission.”

“You… _want_ to be a human weapon again?” was his trembling reply.

“I want to understand why it had to be me.” She paused. “Allen. Am I… Was I ever… evil?”

His breath hitched. He remembered his father’s words. _Malicious. Devilishness._

She had been a sweet, innocent little girl. A sweet, innocent girl who had burned the carpet to pieces and torn her stuffed bear to shreds. Ruined her good clothes and drawn her brother’s blood.

“Never,” he said, his voice faltering, his throat dry. “Never evil. Only strong-willed.”

“Strong-willed?!” she shouted. He flinched again. “Is that your way of saying I’m wild? That there’s something wrong with me?”

“If there’s something wrong with you, there’s something wrong with me!” he spat. “You had to learn it from somewhere. Let me take the blame. I would rather you blame me than see you suffer any longer.”

“You weren’t the one who burned Fanelia, Palas, and Freid to the ground.”

“I know. But I’m your older brother. _You_ are my responsibility. What did I do when you used to cause trouble? I stood back and watched while the maid punished you. I was weak. I should have taken your problems on my shoulders. I should have taught you the right way to act. But I didn’t do any of that. I haven’t fulfilled my duty at all.

“But now,” he continued before she could cut in, “I want to do right by you. You were bad as a child, Celena, so awfully terrible and wild. I was terrible too. Rude and and cowardly. And I want to make up for that.”

She looked up, finally, sitting up and clutching her knees to her chest.

“I was bad as a child?”

“You have _no_ idea. And clearly, I’d forgotten, too.”

Or maybe it was more that he hadn’t wanted to remember yet another failure in his life. Though Celena’s disappearance had torn him up inside, he’d always consoled himself with the truth that he couldn’t have controlled it. But could he really have stopped her from being taken?

Celena was laughing. It started slowly, with a few “heh” noises, until her laughter picked up into a full split.

A shiver ran down his spine. “Are you all right?!”

“It’s nothing.” She looked down at the floor again. “Just that I feel more liberated knowing that. Like it had always been a part of me. This mean streak, I mean. I was always vile, even when I was young… it makes it seem like there was a reason that it all had to happen to me.”

He closed his eyes with a silent sigh. “I understand.” Anything to make sense out of the confusing, twisted mess that was his life.

“I need to ask you something.”

“Anything for you.”

“Be patient while I figure myself out. Please?”

“I’ll be right there with you. Figuring myself out along the way.”

Celena twitched with a hiccup, as if she’d gone to laugh but choked on it.

“I wish I could remember.”

“Give it time,” Allen said gently.

If only Dilandau had kept his own diaries.


End file.
